June 5, 2022
Pentecost C – George Yandell
With a rush of a mighty heavenly wind and with holy flames dancing on their heads, the disciples received the gift of God’s own Spirit. On the 50th day after Easter, God was preparing the tiny band of Jesus’ disciples to go public- to broadcast the incredible news of Jesus’ teaching, his death and resurrection, and ascension. Their witness would be so personal, so profound, that today, Christians are found in every nation, in every culture. What does the news of Jesus mean to diverse people today? And how do we proclaim or stifle His proclamation?
From the collect for Pentecost: “Almighty God, on this day you opened the way of eternal life to every race and nation by the promised gift of your holy spirit: Shed abroad this gift throughout the world by the preaching of the gospel, that it may reach to the ends of the earth.”
Reaching to the ends of the earth- that’s always been God’s desire for the world. In the first account of creation in Genesis 1, God tells the humans God created in God’s own image: “Be fruitful and increase, and fill the whole earth.” After God flooded the world and delivered Noah and his family safe and sound, God again said, “Be fruitful, people the whole earth.” Yet God’s people resisted God’s command to fill the earth. God found instead that Adam’s descendants wanted to live apart from others. They kept clumping up together,
May 29, 2022
Easter 7 C – George Yandell
In the passage from Acts, Paul and his companions continued their stay in the Roman colony of Philippi. As they were going to a place of prayer, they met a slave girl who had a “spirit of divination” (16:16) and whose owners profited from her fortune-telling skills. For several days, the girl followed them about shouting “These men are the slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation”. Like the other demonic spirits in the Gospels, this one recognized the saving power of God as proclaimed by Paul and Silas. Paul finally became so annoyed with her constant presence that he exorcized the spirit from the girl in the name of Jesus. Her owners were enraged, because now that the demonic spirit was gone, so were their profits. Thus they dragged Paul and his companion Silas before the magistrates, where they were charged with disturbing the city and advocating unlawful customs. As the crowd joined in the attack, Paul and Silas were flogged and thrown into jail with their feet tethered in stocks.
In the middle of the night, as Paul and Silas were praying and singing, a violent earthquake shook the foundations of the prison. All the locked doors were opened and the prisoners’ chains unfastened. When the jailer in charge awoke and saw this, he was ready to kill himself, as he would be held liable if the prisoners escaped. When Paul assured him that all the prisoners were still there,
May 22, 2022
Easter 6 C – George Yandell
Xenophobia. X-e-n-o-phobia. “Fear of the strange, the foreign, the different.” Xenophobia rises naturally in humans, it seems. It creates the need for humans to overcome their fears of the differences between them, if they want to co-exist and cooperate with one another. Xenophobia drives the need for “the healing of the nations” in the Revelation to John. Human tendencies to xenophobia drive Jesus to promise in the gospel, “Peace I leave with you, my own peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives.”
I have read science fiction novels by C.J. Cherryh for some time. (The genera now called ‘Speculative Fiction’ by some.) In one 5-book series called “The Chanur Saga”, the characters in far off galaxies are all afraid of one another and they distrust particularly the dark, large, long-snouted, rat-like, tough-skinned beings called “the Kiff”. Brrr. The Kiff smell like ammonia, they are ruthless fighters, and seem always to make off with the prize when either wars or treaties are made. The problem is that every species’ trade routes are being upset by another species- (spider-like methane-breathing creatures- ugh!). The only progress they can make is when they overcome their differences and unite with a common front. But they all have this fear, an incredible fear, of those different from themselves. Even the Kiff fear those they themselves consider less formidable, less threatening. Where their fear comes from I don’t know. They seem to have no reason to fear anyone.
May 15, 2022
Easter 5 C – George Yandell
Since God blessed Abraham and commissioned him and Israel to be a blessing to all nations, God’s dream has been to renew the earth, modeled after heaven. All Jesus preached was a new creation, evolved from the old. So what happens when God’s people erect walls to separate themselves from the other peoples of the world? Let’s listen to the passage from the Acts of the Apostles.
When summoned by the circumcised believers of the Way of Jesus in Jerusalem, they asked Peter, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” Peter tells them of the trance he fell into at Joppa – how God let down a sheet with all sorts of animals forbidden for human consumption under Jewish law, and told Peter, “Get up, kill and eat. What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” Now what did Peter do? He replied not to the question regarding circumcision from the elders in Jerusalem, but how God gave him a vision and corrected Peter- God made the animals good to eat. He replied not to their concern about circumcised vs. uncircumcised, but about table fellowship.
What is Peter doing? He’s leapfrogging over the question of separation between the circumcised and uncircumcised men, and going back to the beginning. He points out that God recalls in the vision of the sheet containing the animals, the very beginning of creation where God created all manner of things and pronounced them good- and calls the Jerusalem leaders to recognize that God intended Israel to be a blessing to the nations,